A Balance of Titans: Peace and Liberty in the New Multipolar World

The U.S. is 16% of the world GDP... but 40% of world military spending.

America's defense strategy is broken, with bloated budgets, endless wars, and nothing to show for it. Unfortunately, the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex is working as designed. Corruption, waste, and catastrophic hubris are out of control, and the result has been a perilous and expensive defense strategy.

If we don’t change course now, the cost won’t just be measured in dollars, but in lives and liberties.

Enter Ivan Eland, director of Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty and acclaimed foreign policy expert. A Balance of Titans: Peace and Liberty in the New Multipolar World lays out a much-needed, rational, strategy-first approach to national security, one that protects vital interests without bankrupting the nation, dragging America into endless wars, or recklessly toppling regimes around the world.

Eland’s bold and pragmatic theory of Independent Internationalism draws inspiration from FDR’s visionary Four Policemen concept. His updated version is both principled and pragmatic, perfectly tailored to the present day, and champions diplomacy and restraint over empire and endless war. The US, once the lone superpower, now shares the global stage with other major powers: the EU, UK, Russia, China, India, and Japan. Each great power, Eland urges, must secure its own region while collaborating on shared global concerns.

Far from being a pacifist retreat, Eland’s vision is the brilliant and strategic recalibration our rapidly changing world needs. Eland argues that instead of risking catastrophic conflict by policing the globe, America must lead the way in building a peaceful, regionally balanced international order—before it’s too late.

With a proposed budget that slashes military spending by more than 40 percent, rare scholarly rigor, and a comprehensive view of America’s ever-worsening relationship with Latin America, A Balance of Titans is a must-read for all Americans who believe in a smarter, saner path to American security in a multipolar world.

Ivan R. Eland is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He is the author of War and the Rogue Presidency, Eleven Presidents, Partitioning for Peace, Recarving Rushmore, The Empire Has No Clothes, No War for Oil, The Failure of Counterinsurgency, and Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy.